Ralph Peters, one of my favorites, has a very strong piece arguing that in almost all cases, terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not captured.  It would be helpful to know how many POWs in previous wars behaved after the conflict, but of course there are many differences between regular soldiers and terrorists.

The "kill or capture?" problem has historically been resolved in favor of "kill" for most of human history.  Americans are among the very first to reflexively opt for "capture."  This sometimes puts us at odds with our closest allies, as for example in the case of Italy at the end of the Second World War.  There was a big hunt on for Mussolini, between British and American forces and their attendant Resistance friends and allies.  The British wanted il Duce dead, whereas the Americans wanted him alive.  The British won, and on balance it seems better to me.  If Mussolini had lived, there would have been something like Nuremburg, except far more dramatic, since the German trials involved the second and third tier officials, not the Fuhrer.  The Eichmann trial later on was probably good on balance, although I well remember a lot of relativistic nonsense, including Hannah Arendt's morally misguided (albeit philosophica lly brilliant) tract.

A long way of saying I don't know what I would order my soldiers to do, but I would certainly insist that my National Security Council made a clear decision.

But one thing I do know:  I would insist that my soldiers have the right of "hot pursuit" into Iran and Syria, and I would order my armed forces to attack the terrorist training camps in those countries.  And I'm quite sure I'd go after the terrorist training camps in Pakistan, too.  It seems the leader of the cell planning to blow up tunnels between New Jersey and Manhattan was headed for such a facility.

We can't have that.